The Woody Allen of Fashion Joins the Club at Saint Laurent

By ELIZABETH HAYT

Published: November 8, 1998

LAST week, on the night before his first day as the new designer for Yves Saint Laurent's ready-to-wear collection, Alber Elbaz laid out his clothes on a chair like a nervous schoolboy. The gesture was purely ceremonial. Mr. Elbaz usually wears an all-black ensemble so rumpled it may as well have been slept in. But the glamour and prestige of his job was unnerving. ''I asked them at Saint Laurent, 'Are you sure it's not a mistake? You can still change your mind,' '' the designer said, with characteristic self-doubt.

You might call Mr. Elbaz, 37, the Woody Allen of fashion, so self-deprecating is his humor. ''If someone says, 'I don't like that dress,' I think she doesn't like me,'' he admitted. ''And if she says, 'I love that dress,' I think she has no taste. So you see, you can't win.''

Clearly, he is of the Groucho Marx school of not wanting to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

But Mr. Elbaz is definitely a member of the club these days. Along with an elite of American designers -- including Tom Ford at Gucci, Michael Kors at Celine, Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton and Narciso Rodriguez at Loewe -- he has taken over at a grand, but moribund European fashion house, and has been charged with bringing it new life.

Mr. Elbaz is the only one among this group to be named by the very designer he is succeeding, Mr. Saint Laurent.

He won the post after successfully modernizing the house of Guy Laroche, a venerable French company that had been flailing since the early 1990's. ''Guy Laroche was all about pink boucle with gold buttons,'' said Mr. Elbaz, who took over in 1996. ''I couldn't go to black leather overnight. So I started with the gold buttons and changed the pink to gray and eventually got to black leather.''

At Saint Laurent, his preference for evolution over revolution is likely to be just as apparent. His personal esthetic -- beautiful, womanly clothes that are above all else, wearable -- is in keeping with his legendary predecessor's.

''To have a good dinner, you have to have a good wine and fresh tomatoes, a past and a present, which will take you into the future,'' said Mr. Elbaz, whose imagination often runs to poetic metaphor.

Many fashion insiders had complained that since Saint Laurent's heyday in the 70's, there had been little innovation in the ready-to-wear line, with the same safari styles repeated each season.

''We understood that we needed to change because the fashion business has changed,'' said Pierre Berge, Mr. Saint Laurent's business partner and president of Yves Saint Laurent couture. ''Alber is American. It's not a question of nationality but of training. American training is very good. The French are totally haute couture and chichi. Old couturiers pretend to be artists. I don't need an artist. I need someone who respects women, craftsmanship and thinks about marketing, strategy and communication. That is Alber.''

With Mr. Saint Laurent now freed to concentrate on couture, it is Mr. Elbaz's responsibility to turn the house into a global enterprise, a skill he developed at Guy Laroche. ''You need colors for South America, New York needs black, California pastels only,'' he said. ''The South needs short, the North long. Within Europe, the German market is looking for one thing, the French another. You make a dress with a coat for the society look or a jacket with pants for the career look.

''The collection has to be versatile but mixed like a cake, not a salad, which is blended in the wrong way,'' he said. ''A cake is blended into one taste.''

Born in Morocco, Mr. Elbaz grew up in Israel, studying fashion design in Tel Aviv before moving to New York in 1986 at age 25.

Three years later, he was hired as an assistant designer for Geoffrey Beene, a position he held for eight years. It was Dawn Mello, formerly the executive vice president of Gucci and now the president of Bergdorf Goodman, who helped him land the job.

''I was looking for a designer for Gucci, and Alber was recommended to me,'' she recalled. ''He wouldn't have been right for Gucci, which was on the sporty track. He did dressy evening clothes. He has a great sense of fantasy and sophistication, and that's why his evening clothes are so good. So I called Geoffrey Beene. Alber learned a lot from Geoffrey. His work became very refined, but he always had his own style.''

That style is deceptively simple. Without elaborate embellishments or silhouettes, Mr. Elbaz relies on classic shapes, a few feminine flourishes, like beading and ribbons, as well as flattering colors to achieve a look that he describes as ''very French -- coquette and chic.''

From his mentor, Mr. Beene, Mr. Elbaz learned how to update styles through daring, complicated construction, placing sharp darts and seams in unconventional places -- across the chest and lower back, for instance.

''The client whom I have in mind wants something beautiful and comfortable," Mr. Elbaz said. ''For evening, the clothes are glamorous but never extravagant. When a woman walks into a room, no one will faint, but she will be noticed.''

Nicolas Jurnjack, a hairdresser who has worked with Mr. Elbaz on his last three shows at Guy Laroche, said the designer was never directly influenced by past styles or what is trendy. ''He never talks about the 60's, the 20's, or makes reference to a magazine,'' Mr. Jurnjack said. ''Alber is the first designer I've met who never asks me what was in the shows in London or Milan, which come before Paris. If I make a comparison to someone else, it's already too close, and he throws it out. His references come from the street, and they're always very social.''

Standing apart from other designers, Mr. Elbaz displays little interest in fame or stardom. ''It's so 80's,'' he said dismissively. He lives in the Bastille, an unpretentious section of Paris, where he rents a sparsely furnished apartment. He takes a subway, bus or cab to get around. ''I never walk, I don't like to walk, I'm Jewish,'' he said, with a laugh.

''Alber is an example of someone getting ahead on the basis of his portfolio and talent,'' said Amy Fine Collins, a special correspondent at Vanity Fair, who frequently writes about fashion. ''There was no P. R. blitz. From the beginning, he was fascinated with a new way to cut cloth and stitch a seam. Those things obsess him. These are things in the bright flash of a camera or splashy video you can't see. Today, what matters in fashion is what looks splashy. It's about superficial effects and not anatomy. Alber gets anatomy. Let's just say, he's the real thing. He's not interested in being a celebrity or walker for socialites.''

When not working, Mr. Elbaz loves to eat, food being a passion and frequent topic of conversation, his weight a preoccupation.

''I eat a lot when I'm tense or relaxed,'' he said. ''I am always tense or relaxed, so there you go. I say I'm allergic to sand because I won't wear a bathing suit. But it's because I'm fat.''

As a people person with a gentle, upbeat personality, it is not surprising that Mr. Elbaz was an official social planner for the troops while serving in the Israeli Army. For three years, he planned parties, organized visits to a local nursing home and taught soldiers about culture, geography and music.

It was also in the army that Mr. Elbaz came to appreciate loyalty. ''In the army, you know someone is behind you,'' he said. ''You depend on him. Fashion is a business, but not a Swiss watch business. It's very personal. As a designer, sometimes they like you, and other times they throw you to the dogs. Loyalty impresses me.''

Mr. Elbaz's Israeli background also helps to explain his down-to-earth attitude toward fashion and his sense of priorities. ''There's so much going on there, so much beyond fashion,'' he said, referring to the daily political crises in Israel. ''You take everything in proportion. You see different perspectives. Let's say you get a midnight blue fabric when really what you wanted was navy. You make it work. You do the best you can.''

A frequently recounted example of Mr. Elbaz's ability to turn an accident into an advantage occurred during his first show at Guy Laroche. As the models strutted down the runway in rhinestone studded sandals, the jewels started popping off, scattering across the floor. Once the straps had broken, the models kicked off their shoes, continuing the show barefoot.

''At the end of the show, there was dead silence,'' Ms. Mello remembered. ''Then, out of the back, burst this little man with hair that looked like he stuck his finger in an electric socket. He danced and jumped down the runway. No one had ever seen anything like that. People started to laugh and they stood up and started applauding, and he got the best reviews.''

Recalling the mishap, which to another designer might have signaled disaster, Mr. Elbaz responded lightheartedly.

''People thought we planned it,'' he said. ''It was so good. I laughed about it. This is part of life. It gave a human touch to that first show. The whole thing was like a big happening.''

Photos: Alber Elbaz at Guy Laroche in Paris. Inset left, the safari look of ready-to-wear Saint Laurent, a moribund line he hopes to modernize. Inset right, a jersey gown he designed to give Laroche new life. (Left to right, Dan Lecca, Jean Marc Armani and Jean-Luce Hure for The New York Times)